


Across The Line

by vic_amy_z



Category: Franklin & Bash
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:50:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vic_amy_z/pseuds/vic_amy_z
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When work and nearly three thousand miles separates them, how do Peter and Jared cope?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Across The Line

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the kink meme. This follows on from [_'Not According To Plan'_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/267730) but you don't need to have read it to enjoy this one. Also, the thing I know nothing about in this fic is computer games...!

'... Which brings us to the final point on the agenda; the annual Infeld & Daniels team building weekend.'

Jared's head snapped up so fast he almost gave himself whiplash. 'What? No, we only just had one of those a couple of months ago. No way am I surfing again. Uh-uh, not happening.' He was getting dangerously close to stamping his foot.

'Calm down, Mr Franklin,' Infeld said with a smile, 'It's the New York team who are going away and I just need a few of you to assist in their office until they get back.'

Jared visibly relaxed at Infeld's words. 'That's okay then...' he saw Peter shaking his head almost imperceptibly from the corner of his eye, 'Or not, y'know, whatever...' he said, confused. It was then he noticed that the rest of the lawyers around the table had started to mumble about cases they couldn't possibly leave, clients that required personal hand-holding and commitments that they just couldn't get out of.

Infeld held his hands up and gradually the dissent stopped. 'I had a feeling that you might all come down with a collective case of workaholism, so I intend to deal with this in the fairest way possible.' Infeld gestured through the glass doors and his assistant came in carrying a bowl.

'Competitive apple bobbing?' Peter asked, looking bemused.

'No, Mr Bash,' Infeld replied, like it was a perfectly sensible suggestion, 'We will be drawing names.'

'Oh, well, I guess that makes more sense,' he conceded.

Peter still looked uneasy about the process. Jared wasn't exactly sure what was going on or why no one wanted to go to New York, but everyone else's reactions told him that he should start hoping that his wasn't one of the names coming out of that bowl. Infeld started to select slips of paper and read out the results.

First name... not him.

Second name...still not him.

Third name... Infeld paused for a fraction of a second. 'Peter Bash.'

Jared tried not to react inappropriately and he could tell that Peter was trying to do the same by the fact that he wouldn't make eye contact. He had no idea what the other two names were that Stanton read out, apart from the fact that they weren't his.

At the end of the meeting, those who hadn't been picked exited the conference room rapidly before Infeld had the chance to change his mind, leaving the others to sort out the necessary arrangements. Damien even said to Peter, 'Sorry. Better luck next time,' and he actually sounded as though he meant it. What the hell was that about?

 **~~~~~~~~**

Fifteen minutes later, Peter threw open the door to their office and slammed it so hard behind him that Jared thought he'd felt the windows rattle.

'Hey buddy, trouble in paradi... Woah!' Jared didn't even get the chance to finish his sentence before Peter had grabbed him by the arm, hauled him out from behind his desk and pushed him into a corner of their office that they had already established was mostly shielded from view. Mostly.

Squashed in between a filing cabinet and a pot plant, Jared found himself being very thoroughly kissed by what appeared to be a very angry Peter Bash.

Jared tried to come up with some sort of gesture that said, _'Dude, we're not invisible, someone's gonna notice you tongue-fucking me in a minute and then we're gonna have some awkward questions to answer...'_ without actually having to stop kissing him. Somehow, the vague hand waving that he managed to come up with was lost on his best friend, so Jared resigned himself to being pressed up against the wall until Peter had calmed down. It wasn't like it was a _bad_ place to be on a Thursday afternoon.

Finally, they came up for air. 'Um, hi?' Jared said, grinning. He was still breathing a little fast, his skin felt flushed and his lips tingled. 'Better?' he asked, one hand still tangled in the hair at the nape of Peter's neck.

'Much.' Peter replied, still pushed up against Jared.

''Cause y'know, we usually wait until everyone has _left_ the office before we do this,' Jared said, still grinning.

'It was an emergency and the janitor's closet was too far away.'

Jared nodded, as though emergencies that could be alleviated by making out were something that happened all the time. 'So, d'you think you might want to, um...?' This time, the gestures were correctly interpreted by Peter and he carefully unwound himself from Jared.

'Sorry,' Peter said sheepishly, quickly pressing another kiss to Jared's lips before letting him go completely.

'D'you wanna talk about it?' Jared asked hesitantly, not quite sure if he really wanted to know what had got Peter so agitated.

'I can't talk about it, because I have to be on a plane to New York in,' Peter checked his watch, 'Less than three hours, so right now I have to go home and pack.'

'You're leaving today?' Jared tried not to sound petulant.

'One forty-five from LAX,' Peter admitted.

'Fuck.'

'I don't think we've got time to explore that option right now, but I could probably squeeze in a quick hand job in the bathroom?' Peter offered.

Jared laughed. As tempting as it was, he said to Peter, 'Go on, get out of here - I'm not going to be the one who has to explain to Infeld why you missed your flight.' Peter just grinned, grabbed his bag and headed out the door. 'And call me when you get there,' Jared yelled after him, but Peter was gone, leaving Jared feeling annoyed, confused and horny in equal measure.

 **~~~~~~~~**

The next morning, after a couple of hours of broken sleep, Jared was in the office early. In fact, if he were in any earlier it could realistically be considered that he'd arrived late the night before. Several cleaners were very surprised to find his and Peter's office occupied at that time.

In fact, throughout the day there seemed to be a never ending stream of Infeld & Daniels staff who were surprised to see Jared there without Peter. At first Jared just thought that it was odd. Then he decided that they really needed to start seeing other people before everyone assumed that they were actually joined at the hip. Eventually he lost it completely and yelled at one of the secretaries, 'He's in New York! I'll ask for compassionate leave next time!'

Then he had to chase after her to apologise because he felt like shit for taking out his frustrations on someone who didn't deserve it. It wasn't her fault that he didn't function that well without Peter. Word must have got 'round though, because after that, people pretty much left him alone.

Later that evening, after nearly sixteen rather unproductive hours in the office, Jared was just considering calling it a (very long) day and dragging his sorry ass home when the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up irritably.

'Hey buddy, it's me,' said the voice on the end of the line.

'Peter! How'd you know I'd still be in the office?'

'Lucky guess. Plus, I already called the Cave and your cell, which is switched off by the way. My next call was going to be to your mother.'

'I'm surprised no one's phoned her already,' Jared muttered.

'What?'

'Nothing... So, how's New York?' Jared asked.

'Wet. I miss LA.' There was a pause, as if Peter was going to say something else but changed his mind. Then he continued, 'But hey, I finally got that hotel room that we thought we were gonna get for our team building weekend; room service, fluffy bath robes, everything.'

'Even the pay-per-view porn?' Jared asked.

'Even the pay-per-view porn!' Peter laughed in response. 'If I didn't think that I'd have a hard time getting double the expenses past Infeld, I'd be telling you to get your ass on the red-eye and come and enjoy it with me.'

'We do have porn at home y'know, Peter.'

'You know what I mean.'

'Yeah, I know what you mean.' There was an uncomfortable pause as Jared tried not to think too much about what he and Peter could be getting up to in a hotel room at that moment.

'So, what're you doing?' Peter asked, lightly.

'Oh, I was just finishing up some reports here,' Jared said, lying through his teeth. 'Then I was gonna head home, y'know, get an early night.'

'Considering it's gone eleven here, I'd hardly call it an early night. What are you _really_ doing?'

'Playing darts,' Jared admitted.

'By yourself? Dude, that's just too tragic. Come on, I'll give you a game.'

'Okay. And how do you suggest we play darts by 'phone, dumb ass?' Jared said, looking at the handset like Peter had gone mad.

'Put me on speaker. You'll have to take my throws but it'll be just like I'm there in the office with you.'

So for the next half an hour or so, Jared threw darts and chatted to Peter; talking about the case he'd been assigned in New York, Jared's plans for court next week and whether or not Marisa Tomei was indeed hotter than Scarlett Johansson.

And it _was_ just like Peter was there in the office. Except when Jared was taking a shot at the bulls-eye, there was no one to lean in behind him and gently blow across his ear so that the dart actually ended up in the wall, three feet to the right of the board. And when he was staring at a deposition for the hundredth time, there was no one to tell him that he was getting too tired to concentrate and drag him out of the office, insisting that they could finish in the morning. And when he was starting to get bored with working late into the night, there was no one to press him up against the wall and kiss him endlessly until he was practically begging to go home to bed, knowing that there was a fifty-fifty chance that they'd only make it as far as a blow job in the back of the car.

Apart from all that, it was exactly like Peter was there in the office.

They were just getting into a discussion on whether their court battles with DA Swatello would get easier or harder if one of them actually managed to sleep with her, when Damien came past the door. _Fuck_ , Jared hadn't even realised that he was still in the office, and some of their conversations had been pretty loud.

Damien stuck his head 'round the door and said, 'Jared, if you're going to have phone sex with your boyfriend on company time, could you at least take him off speaker?'

Jared froze involuntarily. It could easily be just another one of Damien's digs at them both, but then again, they had been pretty indiscreet recently. Before Jared could think how to react, a voice came loud and clear from the phone on the desk, 'Hey Damien, why don't you just...' and Peter proceeded to suggest in rather graphic language that Damien should vacate their immediate vicinity whilst performing an act upon himself that Jared was pretty sure was physically impossible.

'Oh, that's nice, Peter,' Damien retorted, colour rising on his cheeks, 'You kiss your mother with that mouth?'

'No, but he does kiss yours,' Jared shot back, grinning. As Damien gave Jared a withering look and walked off down the hallway, Jared very nearly turned to high-five Peter before he remembered that he wasn't actually there. Hey, it really _was_ just like Peter was there in the office!

They talked a while longer until Jared could hear Peter stifling a yawn. 'Okay, you need to get to bed, dude,' he told his best friend, firmly.

'Yeah, I guess I should go, _some of us_ have to be in the office tomorrow morning.' Jared could still hear the smile in Peter's voice.

'Sucks to be you!'

'Yeah, well, it's only for a few more days, then I'll be back home. It's not just LA that I miss...'

And as Peter started to say something that Jared just _knew_ would be ridiculously sappy because it was late and Peter was tired, he caught sight of Damien heading towards their office again. Jared leapt up off the couch and snatched the phone up as fast as he could. He did _not_ want Damien to hear _anything_ that was likely to come out of Peter's mouth at that moment.

'... you too, y'know.'

'Yeah, I know,' Jared said, pressing the phone to his ear and hoping that he was offering the right response. 'Call me tomorrow, okay?'

 **~~~~~~~~**

'Hey! That's cheating!' Pindar yelled, leaping up from the couch and dropping the controller, leaving his soldier wide open to get shot in the back by Jared.

'No, it's not! That was a perfectly legal move!' Jared yelled back, not looking away from the TV.

'I call for an independent adjudicator.'

They paused the game and both turned towards Carmen, who slowly looked up from the magazine she was reading. 'Um... I didn't see what happened.'

'Jared threw one of his socks at me!' Pindar said, shuddering with revulsion.

'Oh, man up, Pindy!' she replied, rolling her eyes and going back to her magazine.

Jared licked his finger and drew an imaginary _'one'_ in the air before un-pausing the game and throwing himself back into all-out warfare. They continued their game until it was interrupted again by the sound of the phone ringing.

Without looking up from her magazine, Carmen said, 'It's for you, Jared. It's Peter.'

Pindar answered the phone before holding it out to Jared. 'It's for you, Jared. It's Peter,' he said.

Jared gave them both a look that said he didn't think they were funny, before grabbing the phone and clamping it between his shoulder and ear so he could continue to play. 'Hey buddy, what's up?'

'Hey, watcha doin'?' Peter asked. 'No party tonight?'

'No. We're in mourning for you.'

'Really? So how come I can hear _'Call Of Duty'_ in the background?'

'We're in mourning, dude, we're not dead!' Jared stabbed at the controller and neatly dispatched another one of Pindar's soldiers. 'YES!'

Peter laughed and then said, 'You wanna go somewhere where we can talk?'

'We can talk here, man,' Jared replied. 'Oh come on, there's no way you could have made that shot!' he yelled at the screen as one of his men took a bullet to the back of the head.

'I meant somewhere more private.'

'That's okay, it's only Carmen and Pindy... No, to the left, you idiot!'

There was a sigh from Peter's end of the line. 'Okay, let me put it to you this way. I intend to have a very graphic conversation with you, involving detailed descriptions of a number of things I really want to be doing to you right now. If that's a conversation you want to have in front of other people then be my guest, but you're gonna need a free hand!'

Jared swallowed hard. 'Hey Carmen,' he said, concentrating on keeping his voice all in the same octave, 'Can you take my place, I'm gonna take this call in my room?' Without waiting for her to reply, he dropped the controller in her lap and turned towards the hallway.

Peter lowered his voice to a register that made Jared's skin prickle with anticipation. 'No, go to my room...'

Jared managed to get Peter's door open on the third attempt.

'Um... Jared? You do know that's not your room, right?' Carmen called after him.

 **~~~~~~~~**

Jared collapsed against the closed door and took a deep breath. He loved how Peter could still make him feel like a horny teenager sometimes. 'Dude! What are you trying to do to me?'

'What?' Peter asked, innocently, 'I had to get your attention somehow.'

'Well, you got it.' Apparently, Peter had got the attention of more than one part of Jared.

'Okay, well now I've got you in here, you might as well make yourself comfortable. At least my bed's made.'

'Yeah, about that...' Jared said, moving the phone awkwardly from one ear to the other.

'Did you sleep in it last night?' Peter asked him.

'Well, I wouldn't exactly call it sleeping,' Jared admitted, thinking about the few hours of sleep he'd managed before giving up and going in to work. He climbed onto the bed and settled himself back against the pillows. There was silence between them. 'So, what do we do now,' he asked.

'Why don't you tell me what you're thinking about?' Peter said, softly.

Jared paused, giving the question some consideration. 'Well, I was thinking about ordering a pizza. I'm getting kinda hungry,' he said, finally.

Peter sighed. 'Not really what I had in mind, Jared, but thanks for the update.'

'Oh.' Jared shrugged. 'Well, I've never really done this before.'

'No shit!'

'Hey, I'm trying,' he laughed, pretending to be offended.

'Seriously, you've never had phone sex with anyone before?' Peter asked, incredulously.

'Nope, I'm a phone sex virgin.' Something inside Jared felt weird about putting a name to it. 'Although I get the feeling that I'm about to lose my cherry...'

'I'll be gentle...' Peter laughed softly. 'Just imagine I'm there with you; think about what we'd be doing.'

'I'm guessing that you're looking for something other than _'playing on the X-Box'_ here, right?'

'See? You're getting the hang of it!' Peter laughed again. 'Imagine I'm there, kissing you right now, slipping my hand under your clothes so I can feel your skin against mine.' Without even realising it, Jared slid his own hand under his t-shirt, trailing fingers across his stomach, following Peter's commands. 'And I know that you'd have far too many clothes on for my liking, so I'd probably be stripping your t-shirt off you by now, too.'

'What? That's all the foreplay I get? One kiss and the clothes are coming off already? What kind of a boyfriend are you?' Jared said indignantly, trying not to laugh at the frustrated sigh at the other end of the phone.

'Fine,' Peter conceded. 'We make out for a while with lots of kissing and touching and romantic shit, now will you just get naked already?'

'That's better.' Jared smiled to himself. Not because they ever did any _'romantic shit'_ , but because Peter's exasperation was starting to sound a lot like begging, which made Jared very happy. There was a long pause.

'Um... That would be your cue to take some clothes off...?' Peter prompted.

'Oh, right.' Jared sat up and quickly pulled his t-shirt over his head, forgetting that he'd been balancing the phone on his shoulder and getting it tangled up in his top. 'Hang on, Peter, I think I lost the phone,' he called in the general direction of his clothing, shaking it out. By the time he'd located it and put it back to his ear, Peter was laughing hysterically at him.

'Smooth, man. Really smooth...' Peter said, still chuckling.

'Look, do you want me naked or not?' Jared reminded him.

Suddenly Peter didn't seem to find it so funny any more. 'Okay, imagine I'm lying next to you,' Peter continued softly, 'Kissing your neck, working my way down your body...' Jared shivered at Peter's words. '...Unbuttoning your pants and getting you out of those boxers...'

'Uh-uh, can't do that,' Jared interrupted.

'Why not?'

'I'm not wearing any,' he replied with a grin.

'Fuck...' Peter swore under his breath, the word catching in his throat.

As Peter continued to talk, Jared closed his eyes and let the words wash over him, his hands ghosting Peter's imaginary touch across his body, pushing his jeans down on his hips and letting himself fully appreciate the, quite frankly, _epic_ dirty talk that was coming from Peter's end of the phone line. It really didn't matter that Jared had never done this before, because by this point his input had been reduced to little more than heavy breathing and murmurs of agreement.

'... slide into you so slowly. God, I want to fuck you so much...'

Jared's eyes flew open, his movements frozen. Okay, _that_ was new...

 **~~~~~~~~**

All right, so it wasn't as though they'd ever drawn a metaphorical line in the sand where their relationship was concerned. With each step they'd ever taken, Jared had always waited for it to get weird but somehow it never did.

They'd always been physically close, for as long as Jared could remember. Drunken hugs that said _'I love you, man,'_ as much as they said, _'Dude, hold me up or I'm gonna faceplant,'_ were simply part of who they were. After a while it wasn't just something they did when they were drunk, it was comforting too, like when Jared broke up with his college girlfriend, or when Peter failed Con Law for the second time. It just seemed like the natural thing to do and if it didn't bother them, then they didn't really care what anyone else thought.

Their first kiss had ended up being because of a huge fight with his Dad, when Jared had refused point blank to come and work for the family firm, insisting that he and Peter were going to make it on their own. The yelling match had gone on for what felt like hours and afterwards Peter had found him curled up on the couch, completely numb. He was used to hearing his Dad tell him that he would never amount to anything, but Jared wasn't prepared to listen to anyone say that about Peter. He'd pulled Jared into a tight hug, but for the first time in his life, Jared found that holding him just wasn't enough. Before he'd had time to process what he was actually doing, he found himself kissing Peter. For a second or two, he'd waited for it to get weird, but then his best friend was kissing him back and Jared discovered yet another thing that Peter excelled at.

For a while, making out was just another thing that they did. When they watched movies together, lying side by side on the couch - which was the only half-way decent piece of furniture they'd owned in that shitty studio apartment - Jared could tell if Peter was getting bored with the film because he'd start kissing Jared's neck in that oh-so-distracting way. Sooner or later, Jared would end up flipped over to face Peter and they'd find something more entertaining to do for a while. Jared had even been known to put dull movies on deliberately! It just seemed like the natural thing to do and if it didn't bother them, then they didn't really care what anyone else thought.

The only problem was that spending hours making out meant they were usually left feeling a little... frustrated. When Jared had finally had enough of sneaking away to his room to jerk off, he decided to take matters into his own hands. Literally. It took Peter about thirty seconds to realise that Jared's hand had a purpose in unbuttoning his pants, and another thirty seconds for the whole thing to be over. Although as soon as Peter caught on to the idea of reciprocation, Jared ended up being not that far behind him. As they lay on the couch together, still breathing hard, slightly sweaty and uncomfortably sticky, Jared waited for things to get weird. Instead, they'd ended up laughing hysterically. It just seemed like the natural thing to do and if it didn't bother them, then they didn't really care what anyone else thought.

Jared was fairly sure he'd never forget the first time that his dick ended up in Peter's mouth. Coming home after celebrating one of their early wins, they'd been pleasantly drunk but not totally wasted. They were standing in the kitchen of their apartment, contemplating whether or not they could be bothered to make coffee, when Peter had suddenly decided that something else entirely was on the menu. He'd dropped to his knees with a wicked grin, tugging at Jared's pants as he went. Jared remembered holding on to the kitchen counter for dear life as he discovered the one thing Peter's mouth could do that was even more incredible than kissing.

A week later, Jared returned the favour and learned two valuable lessons; one, that swallowing is not always a decision that you get to make for yourself, and two; that he'd finally found something which could reduce Peter to an incoherent mess, incapable of speaking in sentences for at least ten minutes afterwards. He still ranked it as one of his greatest discoveries. It just seemed like the natural thing to do and if it didn't bother them, then they didn't really care what anyone else thought.

 **~~~~~~~~**

So yeah, although it wasn't exactly a spoken agreement, they'd never drawn that metaphorical line. But right then, Peter was lost in a fantasy where Jared was on his hands and knees and they were so far past any line, metaphorical or otherwise, that he wasn't exactly sure _where_ they were anymore.

And although Jared's brain wasn't exactly sure what to think about this unexpected turn of events, apparently there were other parts of his body that had already formed an opinion and appeared to be very much in favour of the scenario.

Jared decided to ignore his brain and go with the more informed parts of his anatomy...

Eventually, their conversation went from coherent sentences, to single words, to just sounds, with Jared making more noise that he perhaps had a right to, considering that he was on his own. Not that he really cared; he was rapidly losing control as Peter's moans became the centre of his entire world, until he reached the point where he had no rational thoughts left at all...

There was a moment of silence, punctuated by the sounds of both of them breathing hard as Jared attempted to process what had just happened.

'Well, that was... different,' he said finally, still getting his breath back and waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal.

' _'Good'_ different...?' There was a slight pause, 'Or _'Dude, what the fuck were you thinking?'_ different?' Peter asked, tentatively.

'Definitely _'good'_ different. Unexpected, but good. I think the mess in your room will tell you how good!' Jared laughed, grimacing slightly at the state of... well, everything.

'Oh, thanks, man.'

'Any time.' Jared paused, wondering if he really had the nerve to complete the sentence that had formed in his head. 'And I do mean that, by the way,' he said finally, hoping that Peter would understand him.

'Um...?' Jared could have sworn that he actually heard the sound of the penny dropping. 'Oh...! So, I'm guessing that we probably need to have a conversation when I get back?'

'If that's what you want to call it, dude...'

'Oh, shut up!' Peter said, affectionately.

Jared grinned, knowing that he'd be counting the hours until Peter was back in LA.

 **~~~~~~~~**

Jared headed back towards the living room where Carmen and Pindar were still battling away on the X-Box. As he passed the mirror in the hallway, Jared noticed that he had chronic bed-hair and that his cheeks were far too flushed for him to have just been having an innocent conversation with Peter. He combed his fingers through his hair and hoped that no-one would notice the rest of him. If he'd been paying more attention, he'd have noticed that his t-shirt was on inside out too...

Jared flopped down onto the couch next to Pindar and made a grab for the controller. 'Hey! I wasn't done playing!' Pindar protested, trying to snatch it back.

'Well, you are now. Just think of it like a tag team - and you've been tagged.' Jared grinned and turned his attention back to the screen. 'Pindar!' he yelled, 'She's kicking your ass here. You've got, like, one soldier still left alive.'

'It was a tactical manoeuvre,' Pindar replied, petulantly.

'What? You were tactically getting your ass kicked?'

'It's not my fault. She kept threatening me with your other sock!'

'Nicely done, Carmen!' Jared acknowledged, 'But now, prepare to be crushed...'

'What, with your one remaining soldier?' she asked doubtfully, 'Against my ass-kicking army?!'

'Yep, this is going to be the comeback of the century,' he armed his soldier, stabbing at the controller like a man possessed. 'I'm on fire tonight and _nothing_ you can say could possible distract me from my mission...'

'Oh, really?' Carmen looked at him with a wry smile on her face. 'How about, _'Oh yes! Fuck... Peter! Oh god... Yes!'_?' Carmen's rendition of what had been coming out of Jared's mouth about ten minutes earlier was eerily accurate.

On the TV screen, Jared's one remaining soldier stepped on a land mine and _'GAME OVER'_ flashed up. Carmen punched the air with a triumphant 'Yes!' and Pindar was laughing so hard he looked like he was about to fall off the couch. Without saying anything, his face burning with embarrassment, Jared got up and calmly walked out of the room.

'Oh hey, Jared!' Carmen called after him, 'We're sorry, okay? It was just a joke. What you and Peter do in the privacy of your own...'

The sound of her voice was cut off as Jared closed the door to his room and he began rummaging through his drawers. He knew what it was that he was looking for, he just couldn't think where he'd put them. Jared was trying to remember the last time he'd been on a plane when his hand closed triumphantly around two small packets at the back of a drawer. Bingo!

He walked back into the living room and before either of them could start apologising again, Jared said, 'Hey, I've got a gift for you guys.'

Carmen and Pindar both looked up at him, confused. Whatever they'd been expecting to hear from him, it clearly wasn't this. He threw a small package at each of them and they looked even more confused.

'I thought you might need them for when Peter gets back from New York. 'Cause if tonight's anything to go by, it's gonna get loud...' Jared wandered off into the kitchen to get himself a well-deserved beer, thoroughly enjoying the matching looks of horror on Carmen and Pindar's faces as the reason that Jared had just given them both earplugs, finally dawned on them...

 **~~~~END~~~~**


End file.
